The Belgian Adventure

1. A Letter from Far Away...

"You were absolutely brilliant in the Club today, Meg. I told you Ms. Olivia would elect you supervisor," my best friend Ingrid said with a satisfied smile of triumph on her lips, as we lazily trudged home with our bikes at the end of school.

"Much obliged!" I joked, doing a half-bow. "I couldn't have 'overthrown the reigning Art Club queen' if it were not for my trusty advisors Grid and Char, though," grinning, I nudged Charmaine. She winked.

"Pfff! Alyssa had it coming for her for quite a long time now. The way she kept going on about how she was the one who should lead the exhibition because she'd been the President of the Club for three years in a row with all the experience—" began Grid again.

"Yeah, well, to convert an Art Club into a Gossip Club and to supervise it for three whole years is in itself a kind of Art, you know," I said mock-seriously, trying to stop her going into full-rant mode.

"Yeah, sure. Did you see how flabbergasted she was when Ms. Olivia asked her to present her portfolio? I don't think the girl even knows what that means! Alyssa is such a sham, god." Ingrid rolled her eyes.

I shook my head, smiling. Ingrid could be a little unforgiving in her judgements sometimes. If Charmaine, our other best friend, and I weren't by her side, she would have reduced half of our school's students to ashes by now, courtesy her blazing, no-holds-barred personality!

As we reached my street, I spotted a shiny black sedan parked in front of the gates to my house.

"You have any visitors, Meg?" Char asked, following my gaze.

"I doubt that. Must be parked wrong," I frowned. To our surprise, it suddenly sprang into life and zoomed ahead when we were hardly a block behind it.

"Weird," said Ingrid, raising an eyebrow. I wondered for a fleeting second if it had indeed stopped to drop off some visitors, though it was highly unlikely.

"Anyway, here's your house. Better be off quick before your super-possessive brother gets a glimpse of us!" Char winked, and climbing onto their bikes, they were both off down the block before I could finish saying "See you later".

A cold gust of wind sneaked inside the house as I entered and slammed the front door behind me. It was dark, and any doubts I had of visitors in the house quickly dissipated. As I switched on the lights, an involuntary shiver went up my spine.

"I'm home!" I yelled, flinging my bag on the sofa as I made my way into the living room.

I'd been hoping my twenty-two-year-old deaf elder brother would still somehow hear it and without saying, prepare a hot mug of coffee for me. Okay, it was more of a daydream—we hadn't been on the best of terms for a long while now, even if we lived under the same roof, and so he turned deaf only when I had something to say to him.

"Jordan? You there?" I waited for a few seconds, listening intently for any sound of my brother lounging about upstairs. Nope, the house seemed completely empty; usually he was back from college by the time school ended. Then I remembered—his car wasn't there in the driveway.

I sighed. "Meg, you know the rules. The one early has to cook for both. But why today of all days?" I muttered, talking to myself as I headed to the kitchen to make myself a hot cup.

Working part-time at the café, I mostly have an aversion to coffee. Today, though, had been one of those days when the ever-reliable coffee is your sole comfort in some twenty hours of wakefulness. Except school, which is a cause for stress every single day of the year, the weather had also been on the wrong side since morning. Although Spring had officially arrived, occasional bouts of cold winds kept swaying over the city, perhaps saying, "Don't be too happy, we're still around, so better watch out!"